Project 3

Koosbane
Karaoke

This project will
focus on collecting motion capture data and then using that data to
animate a non-humanoid character moving/dancing to music. As the title
suggests, this assignment was inspired by some of the various muppet
acts taking place on the planet koosbane.

The first thing you need to do is pick a song, preferably one available
in digital form. This should be at least a 60 second clip. You will be
listening
to this clip a lot so make sure its something that will not drive you
insane. You will very likely hate this piece of music when you are
done, and possibly have nightmares about it, so please chose carefully.

Then you need to think of a non-humanoid character that will be moving
to the music. Maybe its a worm or a bunch of lights or a bunch of
disconnected blue discs. The idea here is to be creative in what this
alien creature looks like. It just cant look like a person. Think about
how the creature(s) will move to the music before you get to the motion
capture area.

You will then use motion capture techniques to animate this character.
We will use the C-Wall in the lab to collect position and
orientation data for four sensors that you hold/wear. You will then
clean
up that data and use it to animate your computer generated character so
it moves to the music. Be sure to bring something with you to your
motion capture session to play back your music. We will be scheduling a
few days in November when the groups can come and do your motion
capture sessions. This will take place in 1032 SEL, which is in the
North East corner of the Western building of SEL.

The data you will be collecting takes up about 10K per second
uncompressed, and 0.2K per second compressed. There is an ethernet
connection in the area using DHCP.

You also may want to use some of the routines you created in Project 2
to augment the motion capture in this project. All of the primary
motions of the character should be through motion capture, but
secondary effects can be through other routines. You may also want to
use some of the kinematics material.

Since you will have a limited number of sensors you may want
to do the
motion capture in several stages ... ie one time you are acting as the
body, and a second time you are acting as the antennae ... or maybe the
second time you act as another creature or piece of scenery that reacts
to the moving creature.

One major difference in this project is that this project will be done
in groups. The groups will either have 2 or 3 people. Please email me
your group members once you have formed.

As with the first project, there will be a we page describing your work
and a presentation of your work to
the class. These presentations will be 10-20 minutes long with an
additional 10 minutes for in-class questions. Each member of the team
must speak for a reasonable amount of time during the presentation.Scheduling the
motion tracking system:

Each team will
have one two hour period on Thursday or Friday to do their motion
capture. If more time is needed then Monday should be available. Please
emain Andy for your preferred time on either Thursday or Friday.

Here are the instructions for
doing the motion capture work (minus the password for the computer)

CS527
Motion Tracking Instructions

The motion capture work will take place in 1032 SEL West

Log into cwall.evl.uic.edu using the cs527 account with Password:
<see physical sheet in room>

There is power available under the table if you need it

Turn on the projectors using the black barco projector remote

The terminal icon in the lower panel will launch a terminal window

In one terminal window kill tracking with:
./KILLTRACKER
In that same window start tracking again with:
./GOTRACKER
In another terminal window run the mocap application with:
./mocap

The projection screen should show the location of all the sensors e.g.
<1>

You can use the strips of velcro to attach the 4 sensors. Watch the
locations of the sensors as you move around to see if any of the
sensors jump unexpectedly. This is especially true if you get close to
the emitter above you . Remember that metal will affect the sensors –
metal earrings, belts, jewelry, etc.

Start recording with ‘S’ and stop recording with ‘T’ when ready. Each
recording will be stored in its own text file.

Compress the files you want to keep with gzip
ftp the files off the system, perhaps to
ftp://ftp.evl.uic.edu/pub/INcoming/527

When you are done:

Delete any data files that you created to make room for their data files

If there is no other group taking over for you:
Kill the tracker with ./KILLTRACKER
Log out of the cwall.evl.uic.edu machine
Make sure the projectors are turned off with the
barco remote
Make sure the lights are turned off and the door is
closed